He didn't buy me. He borrowed me. Apparently there's a difference.
Two in the morning. A man in a black overcoat at the door of my grandmother's bakery. Snow on his shoulders. A face like a wanted poster and a voice like he's never had to raise it. He tells me, very calmly, that I sold the wrong piece of information to the wrong man tonight, and that men are coming to kill me by sunrise, and that he is — and I quote — the better option.
I told him to try the twenty-four-hour Dunkin' on Atlantic. I called him a donut man. I held a cleaver to the crack in the door.
I got in his car anyway.
Maksim Vasiliev is the heir to the Boston Bratva. He is six-foot-four of cold pale eyes and old scars and a coat that costs more than my rent, and he has locked me in his harbor penthouse "for my own protection," which is a phrase doing more work than any phrase has any right to do. I am five-foot-two and I run a bakery and a quiet little side hustle in envelopes I should not have been touching, and I am not staying in his guest room for two weeks like a houseplant.
So I rearranged his kitchen.
I stole his t-shirts. I made him eat the bread. My best friend climbed the building to lay eyes on me, his housekeeper let her in because she was crying, and somewhere upstairs there is a piano he told me he doesn't play that I can hear at midnight, and I am, very stupidly, very obviously, falling in love with the man who is supposed to be keeping me alive.
Then they burned the bakery.
And Maksim Vasiliev — who has been carrying eleven years of cold around in his chest because of a girl named Anya — Maksim, who has decided to be careful with me, who has not put his hands on me in eight days, who lies about leaving and lies about pianos and tells the truth about everything that matters —
Maksim is about to stop being careful.
— — —
His To Borrow is a steamy, slow-burn dark Bratva romance with a sharp-tongued heroine, a heir who can't keep his hands to himself once he stops trying, and a found family of friends who would absolutely climb a building. First in The Vasiliev Reign series. Full-length. HEA guaranteed. No cliffhanger.
Tropes & Themes:
Two in the morning. A man in a black overcoat at the door of my grandmother's bakery. Snow on his shoulders. A face like a wanted poster and a voice like he's never had to raise it. He tells me, very calmly, that I sold the wrong piece of information to the wrong man tonight, and that men are coming to kill me by sunrise, and that he is — and I quote — the better option.
I told him to try the twenty-four-hour Dunkin' on Atlantic. I called him a donut man. I held a cleaver to the crack in the door.
I got in his car anyway.
Maksim Vasiliev is the heir to the Boston Bratva. He is six-foot-four of cold pale eyes and old scars and a coat that costs more than my rent, and he has locked me in his harbor penthouse "for my own protection," which is a phrase doing more work than any phrase has any right to do. I am five-foot-two and I run a bakery and a quiet little side hustle in envelopes I should not have been touching, and I am not staying in his guest room for two weeks like a houseplant.
So I rearranged his kitchen.
I stole his t-shirts. I made him eat the bread. My best friend climbed the building to lay eyes on me, his housekeeper let her in because she was crying, and somewhere upstairs there is a piano he told me he doesn't play that I can hear at midnight, and I am, very stupidly, very obviously, falling in love with the man who is supposed to be keeping me alive.
Then they burned the bakery.
And Maksim Vasiliev — who has been carrying eleven years of cold around in his chest because of a girl named Anya — Maksim, who has decided to be careful with me, who has not put his hands on me in eight days, who lies about leaving and lies about pianos and tells the truth about everything that matters —
Maksim is about to stop being careful.
— — —
His To Borrow is a steamy, slow-burn dark Bratva romance with a sharp-tongued heroine, a heir who can't keep his hands to himself once he stops trying, and a found family of friends who would absolutely climb a building. First in The Vasiliev Reign series. Full-length. HEA guaranteed. No cliffhanger.
Tropes & Themes:
- Forced proximity / captive heroine
Bratva heir × baker
Touch her and die
He falls first (and harder)
Ride-or-die best friends
Found family / second-chance fatherhood
Slow burn → explicit heat
Grumpy / sunshine
Age gap (5 years)
Morally grey hero, sharp-mouthed heroine
Only one bed (eventually)
Found language: she calls him a donut man, he calls her Tsarina
Content Notes:
This is a dark mafia romance for readers 18+. On-page violence including death; references to past loss; forced proximity; controlled environments; explicit sexual content; mention of a vehicular incident in backstory. Guaranteed HEA. No cliffhangers. No cheating. No third-act breakup that lasts more than four pages.
Used availability for Cora J Riley's His to Borrow